Do you think you are better-off alone?

This post idea came about accidentally. I and a friend once had a discussion about the importance of thinking for other people around us: Friends, family, country, national, continent and why not the whole world. Thinking for the benefit of the group is indeed for the benefit of you too. Isn't all about mutual benefit? Isn't development of oneself is inherently linked to the relationship with the community and society around us?.’’Can we prove this ‘’, I asked myself. I seem to be quite confident about this statement for some reason. I am surprise that I have never thought of this before . ‘’So why now? ‘’I thought. 

Although consciousness is the common factor amongst all sentient beings,

including humans, aspiration in life is a special attribute of a human being. Within ourselves, we have always got aspirations. It is something we are born with. Something that varies in magnitude from person to person. Aspirations keeps us alive, give us the hope to improve and the drive to move forward.

So how much our aspirations influence our lives?. Significantly, I suppose. The targets we set do too. The nobility, genuinity and characteristics of our aspirations determine our overall direction at some point. Some people aspire to be wealthy, some to gain power, some advance their career and some to have life full of fun. Some want to travel across the world an enjoy cultures and people. So aim to please the creator and make it the centre of their lives. Whether it is personal, professional, spiritual or financial, our aspirations are our pathways in life. How much far people can go to achieve their aspirations depends primarily on how deeper those aspirations are within themselves!

Would it be possible to achieve one aspiration at the expense of somebody else’s? It does happen. But it is not blamed on who does it alone. It is actually not a blame at all, if you really understand it. It’s a matter of understanding, awareness and group thinking. We all, nowadays, have similar experiences. Going to university, good time with friends, studies, away time, studies, .etc. a circle, until we graduate. The general sense is that everyone is focused on the degree. Everything else was something that came with the fact that we are here together. However, I feel different about it. I feel I want to be of a bigger family. A family that could fill this gap! The gap of thinking alone!!

Just ask yourself, how different could you have become if you worked more with people? Imagine how your life journey could have changed into an amazing one. A journey of learning from others and feedbacking ideas and discussions.

Throughout my life, so far, I have learned that it is the deep understanding of knowledge is what brings up the awakening within us. Generally, learning has been a solitary process, for some time now. However, the true outcome is not solitary any more!. in the workplace. in our communities and in our everyday lives.  I have come to know that, despite PhD being a solitary activity in which you decide your own research direction and guide yourself, it is increasingly more interesting to publish in a group rather than alone. It is enjoyable to work in more inter-disciplinary research in spite of being incredibly passionate about own topic.  So what is the reason behind this?

We all live in the same world, with varying individual aspirations? same community or area, share commonalities, but with varying interests? We all share the same notion of the importance of justice, but individually we differ? The fact is our success is affected by multiculturalism and ‘how people’ persons we are.

Just spare a moment to reflect and think about how things in your life so far have evolved, how could you have achieved what you have attained so far? Is it purely your effort? What was the contribution from others? We can look at this from various angles. Personal, community level, national level and within our own family lives. Here are brief technical examples of diversity (excuse me for using some technical terminology):

1.   In a school classroom, it is more beneficial to mix pupils such that those with good grades (high 
        performers) are mixed with those with bad grades (bad performers). The trick is there is nothing   
         called smart and careless pupil, it is diversity.

2. In wireless communications, signal transmission takes several paths due to reflection, refraction.    Traditionally those paths are understood to cause reduction in received signal level at mobile phones.  However, now the brand of distributed diversity and antenna diversity is growing as a tool to improve signal strength. In fact the boom in mobile internet and high connection speeds we enjoy is fuelled by diversity. In a sense, this can be looked at ways of managing such mix of signals to produce better signal (technically, there are many ways of aligning those signals constructively)
3. In computer network security, email spam classification is performed via various stages of classifiers ensembles (piece of software sit in your email. its job is to send spams to your junk emails). Now research is showing that the diversity of the classifiers is paramount in ensuring that 99% and higher spam blocking probability can be achieved. Nowadays Hotmail and Gmail, diversity based ensembles are being used as latest tool-kits for improving our experience using emails (with reduced spams).

        Well if the computers and ICT got it right, Why can't we?
         
         Thanks for reading  :)